Poor Dui Killer Sings Those Jailhouse Blues

Commentary JOHN GROGAN

The thought of him being forced to run his multimillion-dollar family furniture business from a pay phone in the Palm Beach County Jail . . . Of the humiliation of having to wait in line with common criminals for his turn to talk and then being cut off after just 15 minutes on the line . . .

Well, it's almost too much to bear.

He's had to swap designer duds for jailhouse scrubs, and he's banned from smoking his beloved Marlboros.

The brutes at the county jail even snatched away his custom-made toupe. Oh, cruel world! A bald-headed atrocity if ever there was one.

Like so many before him, Jimmy Baber is misunderstood, a victim of a system that for some reason wants to lock him away for the minor transgression of taking a human life while driving drunk.

Can't we give this poor guy a break? After all, it was only his sixth arrest for drunken driving.

Baber is scheduled to be sentenced in Palm Beach County Circuit Court today on his conviction for DUI manslaughter. He faces up to 17 years behind bars.

OK, hold those sniffles

Last week, Baber sang the incarceration blues to a Sun-Sentinel reporter in an attempt to win public sympathy. He's had me crying in my beer ever since.

Did you know the jail guards sometimes callously refuse to turn the TV to the station the inmates want to watch? Oh, mental torment!

And that Baber is not allowed to wear his nice wristwatch. The travesty!

So, Baber got a little carried away trying to escape accountability. So, he funneled $680,000 in illegal cash contributions to Phil Butler's campaign for state attorney on the condition that if Butler won he'd keep Baber out of prison. So, he tried to subvert not only justice, but democracy, too.

You can't blame a guy for trying.

You might think Jimmy Baber a spoiled rich kid who just can't get used to the idea of paying for his actions. In the past, good lawyers seemed to have a way of making his drinking-and-driving escapades disappear. (He was convicted on just two of his earlier drunken-driving arrests and never landed a day in jail.)

But, let me assure you, Jimmy is no brat. As he is quick to hint, he's the real victim here.

You know, none of this would have happened if that taxi driver had not been out on the street trying to make a living when a pickled Baber hopped the median and plowed his Lincoln Town Car the wrong way down a street in West Palm Beach.

If cabbie William Knox had only been somewhere else, if only he'd had the sense to get out of the way, Baber wouldn't find himself in this awful mess. Awful inconsiderate of him, getting himself killed like that.

And did I mention how bad jail food is?

Jimmy Baber wants us to feel sorry for him, and I suppose we should.

As the furniture king himself said, ``This is something no one, no one, can understand unless they go through it.''

If Mr. Knox were alive, he'd probably agree.

I'm sure Baber feels terrible about killing that man, about leaving two children without a father. But lately he seems to feel a lot worse about having to pay for it.